The Story of a Sony DVD Player

Jun 7, 2024 – By Ashley McMellon

What made the 2011 Sony Blu-ray DVD players better than regular DVD players was that they could play high-definition and 3D movies, connect to Wi-Fi, and even stream services like Netflix and YouTube. They could also share media on a home network, play files from USB drives, and provide excellent sound quality.

With user-friendly menus, quick loading times, energy-saving features, and regular updates, these Blu-ray players offered more advanced entertainment options than standard DVD players.

I could not find an AD for this specific DVD player, but I did find one for Blu-ray DVD players in general that I thought was pretty good...

Although Sony has many good products, the rest of this blog will be solely dedicated to the one that I currently have dismantled on my desk. The 2011 model, BDP-S380 Blu-ray Disc Player, in Black.

The specific model that I have is labled with serial number 1347868, made in Malaysia, on June 18th, 2011.

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Prehistory:

In this section of the blog, I will be discussing the prehistory of this specific DVD player with each of my findings within the motherboard.

One of the first things I noticed was this chip:

The chip itself was made by Hynix. (Hynix Semiconductor Inc.), which is a major global supplier of memory chips. It was established in 1983, and has grown to become one of the leading memory chip manufacturers in the world. Known for their performance, reliability, and competitive pricing, Hynix’s memory chips are some of the most popular. They are manufactured in several countries, but mainly South Korea and China. That iswhy it says “KOR” next to it, meaning it was manufactored in Korea. Next, I went to ALLDATASHEET.COM and plugged in HY27UF082G2B, it gave me the entire history of the chip and it’s manuscript that was last revised in January of 2008. Here is a link to the direct site:
https://pdf1.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/view/333904/HYNIX/HY27UF082G2B.html

The manuscript includes images of the chip’s logic and NAND flash diagrams:

The next “chip” I noticed was different than the fist one. It was much bigger, differently shaped, and yellow. It was the one behind the power button on the DVD player.

I googled 1-882-035-11 and found a listing of it for sale, claiming that it was the DVD Player’s Power-ON PCB. PCB, meaning that this was not a chip at all, it was a printed circuit board. A circuit board connects electronic parts together, while a chip does different, more specific jobs. That means that this specific circut board was for controlling the power of the DVD player, the “on and off” switch. Although I could not find when or where this PCB was made, at least I knew what its job was.

Next, I noticed this warning sticker.

The sticker was placed on top of the disc drive, it was just a warning sticker about invisable radiation. However, the numbers 4-262-994-01 confirmed that this was a BPX-6, Sony BDP-S380 Internal Disc Drive, also made in June, 2011.

This was printed on the back of the DVD player itself, it mentions Sony’s corperation location in Konan Tokyo Japan, and says it’s No. 50 dated June 24th, 2007. I am not sure what exactly it is talking about, because on the front of the same piece of metal it says June of 2011.

This is also printed on the back of the DVD player, providing information on the registered trademarks and DTS
(Digital Theater Systems). It then mentions Dolby Laboratories, which is a company that makes sounds and motion pictures better. Founded by Ray Dolby in 1965. The company was built in San Francisco, California.

Lived History:

On June 5th of 2024, at approximately 10:30 P.M., I FaceTimed my brother, who, at the time, was just one floor below me in the house. I asked him if we had any digital devices in the household that I could disassemble for my DGST 101 class, to which he replied, “I don’t know” and hung up. An hour later, after watching his defeated older sister sit down after searching the entire house for a suitable device, he hands her a DVD player. “I found this in the garage,” “I think it was going to the dump,” he stated. “Thanks.” I replied.

Up until this point, neither me or my brother recall having any encounters with this DVD player before. We could have easily watched movies on it when we were younger, but we couldn’t remember when or where our parents purchased it.

Farewell, I said to the lifeless device as I made contact with a Phillips-head screwdriver, knowing once I started, there was a good chance I would never see it in this condition again.

Afterlife:

Now that the work has been completed, I had gained all the information I could about this random Blue-ray DVD player from my garage, it was time to say goodbye (because my brother cut the cord for some reason). This DVD Player’s next adventure is at IT Recycling Solution. A recycling center in Loudoun County, Virginia.